


A name for a name

by PaganWriterAllThaWay01



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:35:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22802647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaganWriterAllThaWay01/pseuds/PaganWriterAllThaWay01
Summary: “Zuko!” She said with an expression that turned too quickly from  amazement into disdain. Zuko got to his knees and stared back at her as the Dai Li sealed the entrance. Disdain, always disdain. He gave his back to her.“Me.” He said, he hadn't known what else to say, what could you say to a woman who looked at you as if you were the incarnation of evil on earth? What could you answer to your name being spit like the worthless trash it was? How could you answer? He could not pay a name for a name.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 82





	A name for a name

The first thing he saw when the Dai Li agent holding him pushed him into a cave lit by glowing green crystals was the waterbender. The girl with the blue eyes that accompanied the Avatar. The girl whose necklace he had had tied to his wrist for weeks, fidgeting with the pendant for hours while thinking absentmindedly of the colour blue, unable to focus on planning the trap for which he had picked it up in the first place. 

‘You've got company.” The Dai Lo agent said the moment the push sent Zuko tumbling near her.

“Zuko!” She said with an expression that turned too quickly from amazement into disdain. Zuko got to his knees and stared back at her as the Dai Li sealed the entrance. Disdain, always disdain. He gave his back to her.

“Me.” He said, he hadn't known what else to say, what could you say to a woman who looked at you as if you were the incarnation of evil on earth? What could you answer to your name being spit like the worthless trash it was? How could you answer? He could not pay a name for a name. He did not know her name, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to spit her name like she did his.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice was equivalent to a rolling of eyes, as if him being there was ridiculous, as if the fact that he had been thrown into a catacomb by his own sister was a personal offense to her. Zuko could imagine what she was thinking. Why must I be degraded into sharing a prison with the honourless banished prince of the Fire Nation? He found that he wasn't angry at her for her reaction, he was angry at himself for allowing something to hurt dully in his chest when she said 'you’ as if she were saying of all the people in the world, it has to be this fucking moron. I'm being underestimated by being placed next to him. I'm worth more than him, he barely learnt to bend, that's how useless he is!

“Oh, I don't know. What do you think I’m doing here?” He gestured ironically to his place in the floor, under a catacomb, where he had been thrown by the Dai Li agents his sister controlled.

“Why did they throw you in here?” She made a show of thinking it before continuing, “Oh wait. Let me guess. It's a trap. So when Aang shows up to rescue me, you can finally have him in your little Fire Nation clutches.” Zuko turned to look at her for a second before turning back and saying nothing. He was surprised, she didn't feel undignified by having to share her air with him, she was even thinking that he was that good at planning traps, that he still had enough power to pull them through.

Zuko snorted just rethinking her words, but apparently she wasn't done.

“You're a terrible person, you know that?” Gee, thanks. “Always following us, hunting the Avatar, trying to capture the world's last hope for peace!” That something that had hurt dully inside his chest suddenly felt like a needle stabbing through some vital organs. “But what do you care? You're the Fire Lord's son.” the needle turned into a knife that twisted his guts and he wondered if he had ever felt more ashamed of being the Fire Lord's son, had he been this ashamed when he was banished? “Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood.” He thought of Lee, the kid whose brother might never return from the war, of that family, of the Earth Kingdom soldiers that assaulted their own people. He thought of his own brutality, how he had threatened an old lady in the South Pole, how he had set a village on fire to pursue the avatar. He thought of men like Zhao, of Jet and the refugees, of what they all thought of the Fire Nation. Zuko thought of what he had been taught to think of the Fire Nation.

We are sharing our prosperity, they will learn to love us. 

He thought of being pushed away in fear by Lee and his family even when he tried his best to show gentleness and kindness.

“You don't know what you're talking about.” He wasn't cruel. He wasn't like that. He would never– not again. He would not set another town on fire. He was better than that. He didn't want to put that sort of fear in a child's eye. He was not– could not– No, no– that was not– she interrupted his train of thought.

“I don't?! How dare you! You have no idea what this war has put me through. Me personally.” Up until then, she had been facing his back, he had felt her eyes wishing to pierce a hole through his neck, he heard her turn back, heard the rumble of fabric as she crouched down. “The Fire Nation took my mother away from me.” A rash of memories hit him with the force of a tornado. His mother, her kind eyes, the turtleduck pond, her soothing warmth, the night she disappeared, the oppressing vacuum of guilt afterwards.

He suddenly couldn't help but think of the waterbender, she'd been trapped in the catacomb for Agni knows how long, cut off from her friends, thousands of miles away from home, years away from the comfort of the mother his nation took away from her. She was sobbing as quietly as she possibly could. Zuko had cried alone in dark corners enough to know what she needed. 

To see someone as strong and brave as he knew the waterbender to be, sobbing because she was alone, scared and trapped with someone she didn't trust made something inside him clench. He looked at her –the dam inside him about to break–, she was holding her head to her chest and burying it between her knees, and answered.

“I'm sorry. That's something we have in common.” Zuko turned towards her and she stopped crying. He wiped a tear from her face. She looked at him as if for the first time. Her eyes bore into his and realisation flooded his senses like a tidal wave. There was something painfully honest in her clear blue eyes. He stared back at her, hoping that his would reflect the same genuine feeling he got from hers. She was not looking at his carcass. She wasn't seeing the banished prince or the Crown Prince. She wasn't seeing his scar or the colour of his eyes.  
She saw the searing truth, he was no more and no less than a motherless boy, with a current of words and thoughts locked down, struggling to raise amidst the turmoil behind his eyes. 

Then and there, Zuko understood the meaning of freedom. Freedom was looking deep inside the waterbender’s eyes and seeing himself, seeing her, feeling the barriers of war, prejudice, offense and tragedy breaking and tumbling down in her azure orbes. There, for Agni-knows-how-many-minutes he felt free of the burden of his quest for honour, free of his father, finally, finally, completely, utterly free.

“I'm sorry I yelled at you before.” She was leaning against a crystal, a few paces away from him, but no one had ever been so close, how could she be so close?

“It doesn't matter.” And it didn't.

“It's just that for so long now, whenever I would imagine the face of the enemy, it was your face.” 

“My face, I see.” He turned away from her and placed a hand upon his scar. Would it ever stop hurting? The flesh no longer hurt (unless a storm approached) but there was a pain that was not physical he nevertheless could locate in his scar whenever he thought of his life. The enemy, would he ever stop being the enemy? His sister's enemy, his father's enemy, her enemy.

"No, no, that's not what I meant.” Her voice was laced in regret and Zuko had the sudden urge to calm her, she didn't need to feel bad about anything, she was just being honest.

“It's ok. I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark.”

“Maybe you could be free of it.” And suddenly everything in Zuko’s world was upside down. He was the face of her enemy. But minutes ago she had looked at him with loathing. What was she saying, how could she say it? He felt a tear opening, somewhere in the buried and locked chest of thoughts he wasn't allowed to think. He felt hopeful.

“What?” How would it be to go to sleep and not feel the rough texture of his scar rubbing against the futon? How would it be to be handsome again? How would it be to look at his father I'm the eye and show him that he could mark him no longer, that he did have honour, that his clean face proved it? But it was impossible.

"I have healing abilities.” He could not allow himself to hope, scars can't be healed away.

“It's a scar. It can't be healed.” But the waterbender reached under her shirt and held before him a conic container of water. 

“This is water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole. It has special properties, so I have been saving it for something important.” As she talked, she started coming closer, and she was suddenly inches from him, Zuko hoped red was not creeping into his cheeks and neck, blushing then would have been so embarrassing. “I don't know if it would work, but…” she stopped talking, it was not necessary anymore, he needed no explanations.

Zuko stared at her for a soulful moment, trying to convey the message to her that he trusted her. He could not bring himself to cut the silence, it was so peaceful, so unrushed. The waterbender rested her hand on his scar, he felt her breath warming his face, felt blood raising to cover his cheeks. Right then, he didn't care if the water from the Spirit Oasis from the North Pole healed his scar. If he could freeze his life and live forever in one moment, he would happily live the rest of his life with the waterbender's hand caressing his face and her warm breath just above his lips. Would she get closer? He was not sure of what he would do if she came but an inch closer. He would kiss her. Damn it all, if she came but an inch closer he swore to Agni that he would kiss the breath out of her.

Then all of a sudden the avatar and his uncle bursted into the catacomb with a tunnel and the warm and peaceful feeling the waterbender had spread through his body was stolen in a sole second. 

“Aang!” She shouted before running towards the Avatar and it burned inside him. The Avatar glared at Zuko while still holding onto the waterbender, his uncle ran to him and embraced him too. 

Zuko glared back at the Avatar.

Zuko took a decision that day. Azula presented him with a decision. The Fire Nation or the Avatar. Our side, my side, or their side, her side. He would come to regret it for the rest of his life. He didn't know why he had trusted Azula. He had not wanted to be a traitor, he felt he could not add traitor to the long list of pejorative adjectives that could go along his name. He didn't know how he had turned against his uncle, the one man who had always been there for him, had always supported him, the man that had taught him to firebend.

One day, he would call the waterbender Katara and his heart would clench painfully every time he remembered her disheartened and betrayed voice when she said “I thought you had changed!”, his fist would tighten and his eyes would close in shame at his retort. “I have changed.” How could he have said that? It was true, of course, he was forever changed after everything he had lived, but how could he have said that to her in the very moment in which he acted as if he had not changed one bit. 

Later, in the Earth King's throne room, with Azula sitting in the throne and regret curling his insides as he stood next to her, anxiety started biting at Zuko.

“We've done it Zuko. It's taken a hundred years, but the Fire Nation has conquered Ba Sing Se.”

“I betrayed Uncle.”

“No, he betrayed you. Zuko, when you return home, father will welcome you as a war hero.” Hero… it somehow felt wrong. 

“But I don't have the Avatar. What if Father doesn't restore my honour?” How could Father restore his honour? His was an empty victory. How could Father restore his honour when Zuko wasn't sure anymore if he had taken the honourable decision.

Azula stood up and placed a hand on Zuko's shoulder. Zuko had never felt so miserable in all his life.

“He doesn't need to Zuko. Today, you restored your own honour.” Zuko turned away from Azula and looked down.

What was honour anymore?

As time passed by, Zuko could say that empty was the word that could best describe his life. Everything about his life was like it had been before. As if nothing had changed. The same colours, the same people, the same secrets, the same gossips. Everything was the same but him.

He could not eat without looking back at when his cheeks had hollowed from hunger. He could not stare at the tall ceiling of his bedroom without looking back at being a refugee, at living in the lower district of Ba Sing Se. He could not look at Mai without thinking of the waterbender somewhere inside the part of his brain he tried to shut down. 

“I just asked if you were cold not your whole life story”

“I lost my mother to the Fire Nation” 

Empty, empty, empty.

He came to the conclusion, that everything he was feeling came down to the fact that he was made of fire. 

Swirling, all-consuming fire that burst and grew when stoked, dutifully bound to burn down to his ancestors’ bidding. All scarlet and gold. Quick and rushed and lost to the tyranny of they who moved it, of they who sparked it with the same ease with which they would extinguish it.

He was fire from the Fire Nation. Golden and scarlet. Aimed and trained. He was the fire that burned anxiously with the need to do, to right, with the want for oxygen that was drowning him. He burned with the l heat born in an unforgiving land of volcanoes and dragons. He was fire from the Fire Nation that burned and consumed with the power that life chose as its likeness. 

He was fire, burning deep and low, and shallow and high. He had fire dancing at the tips of his fingers, coursing through his strongly beating heart. He had fire waiting to be in his breath. He felt it burning inside, where no one but him could see it or feel it. When the moon hid and the sun rose in the sky, he felt it’s tattoo against his chest, and he ached with the hard-learned restraint against the impulse to let it burn on its own accord.

The sun stared down at him from a million miles up, up, up in the sky, and as his chest expanded and contracted, basking in dawn’s glow, letting its warmth rest on his skin, mingling with the fire within him, he thanked Agni he was born a firebender. It was not the first time he’d thanked Agni for it. He could only think with dread of what his life would have been had he been born without fire, had he not been made of fire. He would not be able to feel the sun like he did, he would not rise with it and feel its shapeless freedom call to his bones, he would not have survived his travels, would have succumbed to the freezing cold of the South Pole or the North Pole. He would have been born an outcast, with no chance to right his lack of talent with the strength of his will, banished at birth. 

Zuko laughed a mirthless laughter, because he knew. He knew with the awful certainty of those who walked to their own deaths that he was lying to himself. 

He had already been born an outcast and nothing, not even the strength of his will, would ever fix his lack of talent. He was doomed to be less, weak in the eyes of his father, weak in the eyes of his sister, weak in the eyes of the court, weak in his own eyes. He knew he was enjoying borrowed affections, too shallow, too easy to withdraw. Soon everyone would know, just as he did –as his sister feigned not to know–, that he was weak. Full of weaknesses, doubts and consumed with anxiety. Full of weak, treacherous, honourless decisions he longed to take back. 

He was, after all, biting fire, with all that came with it. He knew all too well the ugly face fire could have. He bore the scar on his skin witness to his knowledge. He knew of the damage it could impose upon an opponent. He knew the scent of burning flesh and the maddening cries of the owners of the burning flesh, he knew the devastation it brought, how it could raze a whole forest, a whole culture, in a sole night. 

The sky started turning blue as the sun elevated in it. Blue like Azula’s fire, like the Blue Spirit’s mask, like the waterbender’s eyes.

He could picture her quite clearly. He'd known her for many months. Well, not known her. Had known of her existence. Had fought her. Had felt the fire that ran through her water. As he stared at the blue sky, he couldn't help but think of her blue robes, her blue, blue eyes. The blue fire beating beneath her skin.

He wondered where she was, he wondered if she could ever forgive him if he... But he couldn't wonder down that path. That path was forbidden. He couldn't, couldn't, couldn't. It was all sorts of wrong, it would strip everything from him, it would…

Zuko wondered if when dawn passed, the fire within him would extinguish totally. He'd been feeling it a lot lately. Felt something twisting and shaping and cracking deep within him and knew that even though fire couldn't be imprisoned, he could, he was.

Down, beneath his window, a servant girl was tossed outside of the palace, he could smell the stench of her burnt flesh. She was crying and shouting, begging for mercy.

“Please, please, I beg of you ma’am. I need this job, I will never do it again, I was hungry but I’m sorry, so, so sorry, please.” She received a mocking laugh that Zuko knew all too well. 

“But how are you going to work with your hands burnt, little thief?”

“I will, I can, please, my lady.” Zuko was sickened to his core as he saw her face. She was a child, she couldn't be ten years old. Azula called the guards behind her and they escorted the girl away.

Zuko thought he might vomit. It was wrong, wrong, wrong, all kinds of wrong. Could he live like this? For how long?

It was not the first time he had witnessed this sort of incident, and although he had never witnessed it with Azula and a child as the protagonists of such a sight, he had mever hated it with such a degree of intensity. It was not the first time his gut clenched at the sight, but it was the first time he was certain he could not ever see it again. He couldn't wait to be Fire Lord to ban the practice, he couldn't bear the idea of it happening to another human being again.

He thought of water. He was sure that water could save the girl’s hands, could heal them. The waterbender could heal her, would not waste a second before knocking out the guards and healing the child. He wished he could do that. He didn't know what he could do.

He wished he could jump from his window, order the guards to stop, to release the injured girl, and if not cure her himself, get someone to do so. But he couldn't, because there were rules even the Crown Prince could not break. 

Zuko realised how truly trapped he felt. He didn't know what to do. He had never felt so powerless. He felt guilty, wrong.

He stared at the sky once more, unable to look at the burning sun, unable to go away from his window, unable to go away. He was fire chained to a candle, doomed to burn at a dull intensity that couldn't warm nor produce light. He was just a candle, held at the mercy of the merciless. 

He took a deep breathe and looked at the blue of the sky, but he saw another kind of blue and for the first time, he understood that he ached to burn in that blue. Zuko’s eyes closed of their own accord, his mouth twitched into a smile that twisted into laughter. 

He was laughing desperately, with every ounce of madness, anger and despair he felt coiling in his belly. He opened his eyes, he closed them again, hot lava-like lines ran down his cheeks. He was crying, he was laughing, and very suddenly, he knew what to do.

Zuko awoke to the fluffy warmth of his bed in the palace, forcing himself not to grunt or cry out at the soaring pain in his abdomen as he felt Katara’s cold watery hand splayed soothingly over the lighting wound he had received. His eyes blinked open and received the sight of the red walls and the silky curtains surrounding his bed. His back and neck hurt, the muscles of his arms and legs ached, the nails in his toes were itchy and he was sure his breath smelled like something dead.

“Katara…” Zuko said absentmindedly. He couldn’t really see her as his gaze was focused on the ceiling and something told him that moving just his head to look at his healer would be a whole world of pain. She was healing him, she was a waterbender, she was Katara. Her hand was cool, gloved in water, he was certain it was cold against him. Still, it spread a warm feeling through his chest.

“Shhh, you're gonna be okay, go back to sleep.” Yes, that was her voice. Couldn’t she speak a little bit more? He really felt like listening to her voice. Zuko inhaled strongly after something pulled painfully inside his wound. Spirits he smelled awful. 

“I don't want to sleep, I want a bath…” He really wanted one, he felt sticky and smelly. “Kaataraa! Baath me? You can, right? Wouldn’t it be so much fun? Maybe not so much ‘cause I can’t move, but you’d still have a pretty nice view. I think that when I’m totally healed it will be more fun, it won’t be just a nice view.” Zuko wasn’t sure, but he thought he smirked at her. Maybe she laughed at him, maybe she blushed, he really didn’t know, things started to get fuzzy mid-sentence. He was delirious, wasn’t him? 

“Your servants will bathe you when I'm done.” had he said all that aloud? How much had he actually said? Spirits, he hoped he had been drugged with something for the pain so that he could excuse himself in that.

When he woke again, he was alone and his body didn't hurt as much if he stayed still. If he moved, the piercing pain in his abdomen would remind him not to. He had been bathed. Soon after, a servant girl, So Lin (if he was correct), brought tea in a tray and promised to call Master Katara. He was asleep by the time she got to him, his forehead burning with fever.

The next time his eyes opened, he found Katara leaning over him, one hand placed soothingly with a water glove on his abdomen and the other caressing the scarred side of his face with such a tenderness his lips curled in a soft smile. His own hand raised and cupped the back of her head, twisting a few brown locks in his fingers, the other hand raised to touch her cheekbones, they were sharper than before.

“Hi.” She said. Her voice as sweet to his ears as ever.

“Hi.” He said. His voice was hoarse from sleep and disuse.

“Zuko.” what could you say to a woman who looked at you as if you were the incarnation of everything she held dear? What could you answer to your name being said with the tenderness of a lover? How could you answer? Did he dare to pay a name for a name? Katara. Katara. Katara. Would he be able to caress her name like she did his? 

“Katara.” Her name rolled from his lips, he wished he could say that it sounded as sweet to her as his had sounded to him. But his voice was a little dry and still hoarse. He coughed and she gave him a cold glass of water. Where had it come from? He probably would know if he had let his eyes deviate from hers, but it was not going to happen any time soon. 

Maybe he was still a little bit drugged for the pain, but when he interrupted the silence again, he said, “If I kiss you now, will you waterwhip me six ways from Sunday? ‘Cause I really want to kiss you, but I don’t want to die… Not yet, I guess.” Katara’s skin darkened to the most becoming reddish shade he had seen in her face.

“I– I don't think so, no. You'll– you'll have to try it, to–” Zuko pushed her face towards his and caught her lips before she could react. spirits he had wanted to bite her lower lip so many times, it was so plump and so lovely. He held her like that as much as he could, he didn’t dare to deepen the kiss, maybe that would scare her, she didn’t seem to have kissed much before. Was he crazy to think her sloppiness was cute? Because he thought it was pinching-her-cheeks cute “–know.” The word sounded breathless and Zuko felt the warmth that spread through his chest everytime she was close extend to the tips of his fingers and toes, he could swear he even felt it in his hair.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there. I just hope you liked it, and if you did, to please leave some reviews cause they move me to write and I've got half a mind to write a second part but I could do with some encouragement.


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